Robert Stein (1950)

Robert Stein (1972)

Robert Stein (2000s)

About Me

editor, publisher, media critic and journalism teacher,
is a former Chairman of the American Society of Magazine Editors, and author of “Media Power: Who Is Shaping Your Picture of the World?” Before the war in Iraq, he wrote in The New York Times: “I see a generation gap in the debate over going to war in Iraq. Those of us who fought in World War II know there was no instant or easy glory in being part of 'The Greatest Generation,' just as we knew in the 1990s that stock-market booms don’t last forever.
We don’t have all the answers, but we want to spare our children and grandchildren from being slaughtered by politicians with a video-game mentality."
This is not meant to extol geezer wisdom but suggest that, even in our age of 24/7 hot flashes, something can be said for perspective.
The Web is a wide space for spreading news, but it can also be a deep well of collective memory to help us understand today’s world. In olden days, tribes kept village elders around to remind them with which foot to begin the ritual dance. Start the music.

Friday, September 02, 2011

Perry, Palin Disaster Advisories

As Nature calms down, Americans face a weekend of man- and woman-made devastation as Rick Perry and Sarah Palin cloud up on the political landscape.

The “Going Rogue” short-term governor will be pouring “a full-throated defense of the Tea Party” over Iowa tomorrow while critics start to take a closer look at the Texas cyclone’s proposal to dismantle government before his first GOP debate appearance next week.

In a book last year titled “Fed Up,” Perry sounded his manifesto: “It is not enough to be fed up. We must act.”

Among the American institutions he finds hard to swallow is Social Security, “something we have been forced to accept for more than 70 years now,” one of the New Deal social programs that “never died, and like a bad disease, they have spread.”

In the GOP alternate universe, will other contenders even politely question the Governor’s Nutsy Fagan version of history or ignore those rants and spend their time piling on Barack Obama?

Will Mitt Romney, whose lead has evaporated in the Perry sandstorm, take him on or leave it to Jon Huntsman, who has nothing to lose, to sound the only voice of sanity?

In 1988, Perry supported Al Gore for president and chaired his campaign in Texas before switching parties. Now he accuses Gore of being “a false prophet of a secular carbon cult” and says of climate change, “It’s all one contrived phony mess that is falling apart under its own weight.”

In normal times, all this blowhard extremism and irrationality would be fodder for lively debate in a major party primary. But with Palin looming over the landscape, will any of the Tea Party captives speak up in an effort to derail him?

Update: Palin arrives in Iowa to continue her 2012 striptease. To crowds shouting “Run, Sarah, Run,” she drops a gloved hint, “I’m happy with the field of candidates. I think that there’s room for more, though.”